Hume and the Limits of Scepticism

[Demian]

David Hume took Socrates' assertion that 'the only thing you can be certain of is that you can not know anything' to heart. His wrecking ball was aimed not only at the dogmas of religion, but at the dogmas of science as well. I am curious what your opinion may be on scepticism. Does it have any limits? Do we derive our knowledge from our senses, our minds, or from the accumulated dogmas that have built up for centuries?

[NikolaiI]

Well, yes, everything we have is built on those dogmas. Then, making our own ideas is deciding what we think is true anyway, and not dogma, but then what is skeptical anyway? It's a concept the same as any other, as dogmatic as any other. I am doubtful of its value. :)

[Lambert]

Well, yes, everything we have is built on those dogmas. Then, making our own ideas is deciding what we think is true anyway, and not dogma, but then what is skeptical anyway? It's a concept the same as any other, as dogmatic as any other. I am doubtful of its value. :)

A different opinion:

Q. Why aren't you skeptical of skepticism?

A. Skepticism is an attitude, not a belief or set of beliefs. Skepticism involves a willingness to inquire, to investigate, to think critically about any subject. The alternative to skepticism is to accept things on faith and assert them dogmatically. Skepticism is a virtue; irrational dogmatism is a vice. There is no need to defend skepticism. Irrational dogmatism is indefensible.
--- from http://skepdic.com/faq.html (Skeptic's Dictionary)

[Demian]

Hume based his own system on sense impressions only, and in a very strained manner-almost as if he was blind and deaf at the same time. Most philosophers before him distrusted sensory impressions and so relied only on what the mind can ascertain. In a certain respect Hume was doubtful about the value of scepticism also, and this was in the utter darkness we are plunged into when we begin to question all of our sense impressions.

[NikolaiI]

What the mind can ascertain about what? Things that we read in books we obtain by our visual sense, how do we experience the world besides our senses? Anyway I wouldn't doubt the senses so much as try to figure out exactly what is my relationship to the world I know. All my life I've lived and had experiences, and sensed things, but what are these experiences actually, and what do they mean? All of the senses and stimuli, what do they actually mean? And that one famous question, what am I, actually?

[Demian]

This human need for meaning is what Augustine was trying to address when he asserted that faith was necessary in order to come to have any kind of knowledge. Hume's position did not really address ethics in this respect. He thought that the prevailing knowledge of institutions were not able to provide us with any real meaning. The truth or validity of a statement can only be taken as a sort of faith in the reliability of the person that was making the statement. He would even radically assert that 'just because the sun rose yesterday, you have no logical basis to claim that it shall rise tommorrow'. It should be noted that the powerful realization that came to him about the unreliability of knowledge to provide us with any solid ground to stand on sent him into a deep depression and utter distress for a few years. After he recovered, he began writing, and his philosophy has changed the course of western thought ever since. He is the father of everything that is post modern.

[NikolaiI]

I mean: do our sensations mean what they seem to, are they what they seem to be? Pleasure and pain, all of the colours and shapes we see, everything we feel, this comes to us- it comes to our brain and that's how we feel it, but are we the brain? What is our relationship to the brain, and to everything the brain receives? Perhaps all stimuli is neither pleasure nor pain, but mere stimuli..

I agree with Hume that we cannot know the sun will come up. That seems similar to the fact that we can't prove causality. However I'm not depressed by the idea: the earth could also be destroyed by a gamma ray burst, at any minute , and we would have no forewarning whatsoever. But this doesn't bother me because I can't prepare for it. The only things that depress me are when people are nasty to me, and things like war. But maybe I should be happy because just because the war was going on when I lay down, it doesn't mean it will be there in the morning?

[Mr. Dr. Ralph]

David Hume took Socrates' assertion that 'the only thing you can be certain of is that you can not know anything' to heart. His wrecking ball was aimed not only at the dogmas of religion, but at the dogmas of science as well. I am curious what your opinion may be on scepticism. Does it have any limits? Do we derive our knowledge from our senses, our minds, or from the accumulated dogmas that have built up for centuries?

Demian's posts on Hume and the importance of skepticism are legit. Nice thread.

Skepticism is definitely an attitude, or a method of thinking, and is limitless, so to speak. It's hard to understand what you mean by your question of whether skepticism has limits.

I am inclined to think that all knowledge is derived from the senses; I once thought that mathematical knowledge need not have this bias, but I am convinced now that math is more or less a mental construct and doesn't exist in reality. I can't think of anything that is decidedly independent of senses, ideas anyone? Whether math is real or not would be a great idea for a thread.

Unfortunately, a lot, of not all of our knowledge is so due to accumulated dogmas. We accept that the moon exists and orbits about the Earth despite that we have never systematically proven that is there, and that our hearts are responsible for moving blood, though all the while we could be brains in a vat, or tricked by Descartes's Evil Deceiver, or have had our memories erased and rewritten, and so forth. I agree with Socrates and Hume on this one.

[Demian]

It's great you brought up math. This was Hume's one exception to the rule when it comes to what we can actually know. But while Hume asserted that it is impossible to deny that 2 and 2 make 4, the rub was that mathematical knowledge was cold and informal. Although Einstein or Newton may have disagreed with him, Hume thought that math does not lead us to the 'real world' at all.

[NikolaiI]

I remember reading in Nietzsche somewhere he talked about how our ideas of truth now are based on dogmas of the past...I guess it goes without saying.

[Mr. Dr. Ralph]

It's great you brought up math. This was Hume's one exception to the rule when it comes to what we can actually know. But while Hume asserted that it is impossible to deny that 2 and 2 make 4, the rub was that mathematical knowledge was cold and informal. Although Einstein or Newton may have disagreed with him, Hume thought that math does not lead us to the 'real world' at all.

Here I think I have to agree with Hume. Math is very useful and crucial for any physical model, but it does not necessarily result in attainable knowledge. Mathematics is more or less a language, and is used to intelligibly communicate physical systems, systems that tell us nothing beyond formally concluded quantities and relationships. Furthermore, math may also be understood as an instance of formal logic, of which Hume already has doubts.

Whether any quantity may be considered knowledge is pretty suspect. In reality, as it were, it is impossible to absolutely describe anything in terms of quantity. One value or term can quickly change into another, and no system is completely isolated as to avoid this. To say with certainty that a given object or set of objects possesses number appears correct only under the guise of language.